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Author: Chris Lang

I run redd-monitor.org - a website that analyses and critiques REDD and other carbon trading schemes.
I've been an environmental activist and writer since the early 1990s. I have an MSc in Forestry and Land Use from Oxford University and have worked with several environmental and social rights NGOs.

Australia suffered devastating fires between September 2019 and February 2020. About 7.4 million hectares of forest was burned, mainly in New South Wales and Victoria. The fires released 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – significantly more than the 530 million tonnes of CO2 that the country emits each year.

Hoarding of toilet paper started in early February 2020 in Hong Kong after consumers panicked themselves into believing that the coronavirus outbreak in China would disrupt supplies. Within days, toilet paper shelves were empty in the supermarkets. Social media helped fuel the hoarding, which quickly spread across the world from Sydney to London to Washington DC.

WCWC argued that FSC should dissociate from Roseburg because the company was attempting to profit from the town’s water supply, by selling it to a bottled water company called Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring.

WEED, CALIFORNIA – Citizens of Weed, California filed a complaint today with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) after Oregon-based Roseburg Forest Products refused to stop its abusive tactics in a bid to privatize the community’s main source of drinking water.

Most of the recent ARTE Documentary about FSC focusses on problems with FSC-certified operations in the tropics. But ARTE’s journalists Manfred Ladwig and Thomas Reutter also travel to Sweden to investigate whether FSC is doing better in the primary forests of the North.

For the recent ARTE documentary about FSC, journalists Manfred Ladwig and Thomas Reutter travelled to Brazil to take a look at pulp company Veracel’s industrial tree plantations. They travel with Klemens Laschefski, professor of political ecology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

The recent documentary “Who is Protecting our Forests?” broadcast on the European channel ARTE last week included a report from IFO’s logging concession in the Republic of Congo. This isn’t meant as a criticism of the ARTE Documentary, but an addition to it.